We have free MapleStory M gift codes worth $10 — get them while they last!

Popular MMORPG MapleStory M just received some new updates. To celebrate, MapleStory M developer Nexon gave us a bunch of free gift codes with $10 worth of in-game goodies. We’re giving them away to Android Authority readers while supplies last!

The new MapleStory M update brings a dragon master class, in-game events, mini-games, and more. Check out the game’s listing on the Google Play Store to learn all about it.

The free gift code contains the following items:

• Auto Battle Tickets (30min)
• Orange EXP tickets
• VIP Teleport Rock

If you’d like to add these items to your MapleStory M account totally free of charge, follow the instructions below!

1. Click here to download MapleStory M to your Android device.
2. After you’ve installed the game, make sure you create an account so you can use the gift code.
3. Once you’re all set up, fill out the simple form here with your name and email address.
4. Wait for your code to arrive in the email address you added to the form.
5. Login to MapleStory M and go to the “Options” menu.
6. Tap “Enter Coupon” and type in your coupon code.
7. Watch as the free items get automatically added to your account!

There are a very limited amount of codes, so act fast. We will update this article once we are out of codes, so if you’re reading this there are still codes available!

Click below to download MapleStory M and get started with the process:

Install MapleStory M for Android

Source: Android Zone

The post We have free MapleStory M gift codes worth $10 — get them while they last! appeared first on TuneMaster.ml.

15 best Android apps released in 2018!

The year 2018 has come and gone. However, it left us with a ton of excellent products to play with. We already did our best Android phones of the year. Now, it’s time to do the best Android apps from 2018 as well. It was a solid year for new apps. We saw a big push in new launchers, security apps, and browsers. There were also a couple of keyboards and even a new game console emulator. It’s always nice to have such a varied list. This year also features fewer Google apps than in prior years and that’s encouraging as well. The list is quite long, so let’s just get right into it. This was narrowed down from a total list of over 120 apps. Here are the best Android apps from the year 2018!

Take a look at winners from past years!

10 best Android apps released in 2017

15 best Android apps released in 2016

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Cake Web Browser

Price: Free

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

Cake Web Browser is one of the more solid browser options from 2018 and also in general. It has the basics like multiple search engine options, bookmarks, and stuff like that. This one also includes a pop-up blocker, an ad-blocker, an incognito mode for private browsing, gesture controls, and even some news and RSS features. The UI relies heavily on those gesture controls and gives the browser a fresh, new feel compared to the usual style. It’s a lot of fun and something a little different in the mobile space. That’s why we chose it for this list. It’s also entirely free with no ads or in-app purchases as of right now.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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Carrot Weather

Price: Free / $3.99 per year

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

Carrot Weather is one of the few actually fun weather apps we’ve used. It works like most other weather apps. You get rain predictions (in certain regions), forecasts, current temperatures, and stuff like that. It even includes some witty commentary on the current weather conditions like WTF Weather and similar apps. However, this app also gives you up to 70 years of previous weather data. It also includes secret places like the Moon. The premium version of the app also includes widgets if you’re a fan of widgets. It had some early issues, but the app works quite well these days. There’s a monthly subscription price. However, at $4 per year, we really just recommend going with that.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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Dolphin Emulator

Price: Free

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

Dolphin Emulator technically isn’t new. However, it is back on the Play Store after a few years of abandonment. The developers promise more consistent updates and stability improvements this time around. That’s good news because it’s the only actually decent Nintendo Wii and Nintendo GameCube emulator on the Play Store. The Google Play reviews are extremely promising and it functioned just fine during our testing. Most people who have issues use low end devices, so we suspect their complaints are because of the specs rather than the emulator. Of course, we do not condone stealing games, but if you have some laying around, this is the emulator we would recommend.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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Firefox Reality Browser

Price: Free

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

Firefox Reality Browser is probably the biggest and best virtual reality browser launch of 2018. It introduces a real competitor to the space and we hope that encourages developers to improve their offerings more quickly. Firefox Reality Browser supports both 2D and 3D content along with a basic, but serviceable web browsing experience. You need the Google Daydream app to download this one. Otherwise, it should work as normal with your VR headset (namely, Google Daydream). It could use a few more basic features and some stability improvements, but VR as a platform is young so we’re just happy Mozilla jumped on board.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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Forest

Price: Free / Up to $1.99

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

Forest is a new style of productivity app. It encourages people to not check their phones constantly by killing plants whenever they do. They are digital plants, of course. The app works by planting a tree. Each time you turn your device screen on and leave Forest, the tree wilts and you must start again. There are a variety of trees to collect with more coming in future updates. There is a whitelist so you can do stuff like answer important phone calls or test messages. However, it’s a neat little app to get you off of your phone for a while. It’s almost like a widely available version of Google’s Digital Wellbeing, except with trees.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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Let’s go back even further!

10 best Android apps released in 2015!

30 best Android apps of 2014

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Grammarly Keyboard

Price: Free

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

Grammarly Keyboard is arguably the best new keyboard launch in 2018. It helps users type with better grammatical accuracy. It looks at what you type and suggests changes if something goes wrong. The app also delivers explanations about the changes and the rules of grammar. It omits some of the flashier features, like gesture typing, themes, and stuff like that. You do get a dark theme, though, and we expect some of the other features to appear eventually. It’s surprisingly smooth and the grammar lessons should help just about everybody. The app is also entirely free with no ads or in-app purchases.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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Haven

Price: Free

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

Haven is a niche security app that we really like. It installs on a user’s secondary device rather than their primary one. You then toss that second device in with your luggage, a hotel safe, or a similar situation. The secondary device alerts your primary device when it is moved, opened, picked up, or otherwise tampered with. This is mostly a tool for journalists, travelers, and people in places where stuff may be stolen. Thus, it’s obviously not for everybody. Still, it’s one of only a few apps that do things like this. It’s also open source, completely free, and has no advertising.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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Heimdall Parental Control

Price: Free / $0.99 per month / $9.49 once

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

Many new apps aren’t the most exciting releases ever. However, they are still excellent apps. Heimdall Parental Control fits that description. You install it on your child’s device and then on yours. From there, you can monitor your child’s usage, limit them on things like app use and phone calls, and even track their location and block websites. Some of those features require the premium version. You can get it for either $0.99 per month or a single $9.49 payment. We really appreciate having that option in an app market overly reliant on subscription-only business models. It’s easily among the top two or three best kid monitoring apps on Google Play.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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Hyperion Launcher

Price: Free / $2.99

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

Hyperion Launcher immediately illicit memories of shooting robots and a horse made out of diamonds, but once you get beyond the Borderlands 2 references, it’s actually an excellent new launcher from 2018. It hits a lot of the positive elements for a modern smartphone browser. That includes a stock-ish Android experience, plenty of basic customization options, theming, and third party icon pack support. You also get Google Feed as a separate plugin, gesture controls, a font changer, and more. It’s nice to see a new launcher that could actually challenge the big dogs in the industry already with Nova, Apex, Lawnchair, Action, and ADW launchers. This really is that good and it’s also fairly inexpensive for the premium version.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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Khan Academy Kids

Price: Free

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

Khan Academy is one of the best educational apps for adults. Thus, it didn’t shock us at all when Khan Academy Kids came out and it was actually good. This one focuses on a lot of early education for kids, including problem solving, social and emotional development, and more basic stuff like math, reading, and language. It uses bright colors and cute characters to convey the information since kids enjoy cartoons. It all makes sense to us. This is arguably one of the few major learning apps for kids by a company that knows about learning stuff. It has the occasional bug because it’s still in beta. However, we have no doubt that this is one of the best in its category.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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Check out the best apps all the time!

15 best free Android apps of 2018!

15 best Android apps of 2018!

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Navigation Gestures

Price: Free / $1.49

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

Navigation Gestures is a neat new app from 2018. It gives any phone gesture control support even if it doesn’t naturally have it. You can set it to measure swipes from basically any direction along with single and double tapping as well as tap-and-hold gestures. Those who are knowledgeable in ADB or root can also completely hide the navigation bar. The system is simple enough for just about anybody with the exception of the ADB bit, but that is just one feature. There’s another app in this category from 2018, Fluid Navigation Gestures. It does about the same thing, and people seem to like it more. However, XDA’s version came first by several months. Frankly, you can go with either one. We’re not trying to sell you anything here.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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Poco Launcher

Price: Free

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

Poco Launcher is the official launcher app of the Pocophone. We’re a little shocked it made our list this year. However, Xiaomi made a surprisingly decent launcher app. It features customization options, third party icon pack support, and even some privacy and security settings. For instance, you can hide app icons from your app drawer if you want them kept a secret. It also has an app drawer and that’s interesting because Xiaomi phones usually don’t. In any case, it’s light, fast, and serviceable. It’s also entirely free. We wish Google launched its launcher apps like Xiaomi does.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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ProtonVPN

Price: Free / $4-$24 per month

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

ProtonVPN is an easy pick for a top app of 2018. It simply checks all of the boxes that we would want in a VPN, something most VPN apps don’t do. That includes a strict no-logging policy, full encryption, a good list of servers, and it’s based in Switzerland. Swizterland, in case you didn’t know, has some fairly hardcore privacy protections. ProtonVPN also includes a completely free experience with no data caps. You don’t get full speed, but unlimited free use is extremely rare in the VPN space. You can unlock more servers and higher speeds with one of its three subscription plans. They start at $4/month and range up to $24/month. There really isn’t much wrong with it. It’s also friendly for those who don’t know much about VPNs.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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YouTube Music

Price: Free / $9.99 per month

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

YouTube Music the app technically isn’t new. However, YouTube Music, the service, definitely is. The app saw a major evolution this year into its own music streaming service. It includes both video and audio-only streaming content. You also get playlists, direct integration with normal YouTube, and a toggle to turn music videos into audio-only content. That alone makes it one of the most unique music streaming apps on the market. However, its lackluster audio quality, lack of obvious features (like Android Auto support, gapless playback, etc), and confusion with consumers between it and Google Play Music certainly isn’t helping its case. It has the potential to be one of the very best, but it still has a long way to go.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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Bouncer: The best new app from 2018

Price: $0.99

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

Bouncer is a new security app from Sam Reston, former developer of the popular Weather Timeline app. This is perhaps one of the best security apps we’ve seen in recent years. The app lets users temporarily grant permissions to applications. For instance, you can enable location in Facebook and Bouncer helps you remove that permission later so Facebook doesn’t have it all the time. Frankly, that should be a stock Android feature and we certainly wouldn’t be disappointed if it became one someday. Bouncer itself requires no permissions and doesn’t require Internet access either. The app works as advertised, it’s super cheap at just $0.99, does not require ADB or root access, and it even won our best apps of the year fan poll. Yes, it is that good. In fact, this is one of those rare apps that everybody should at least try if they care at all about privacy and security.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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Honorable mentions

There are always a ton of apps every year that are great but don’t always make lists like this. Here are a list of great apps from 2018 that probably should be on this list, but couldn’t be because 15 is kind of our limit here:

• 1.1.1.1
• AirMirror
• Datally
• Inware
• Kiwi Browser
• Lean Launcher
• Opera Touch
• RememBear
• Rootless Launcher
• Slowly
• Smart Launcher 5
• Tasty
• Tor Browser
• Vimage
• VPNHub

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Thank you for reading! Try these out too!

15 best weather apps and weather widgets for Android

15 best Android Widgets for your home screen!

If we missed any great Android apps from 2018, tell us about them in the comments! Apps are a massive market and sometimes we just don’t see everything there is to see, plus your comments will help other readers find even more interesting apps! Of course, you can always click here to check out our latest Android app and game lists as well!

Source: Android Zone

The post 15 best Android apps released in 2018! appeared first on TuneMaster.ml.

Revealed: Why Building an Email List is so Important Today (6 Reasons)

Are you considering building an email list, but have some doubts about why it is needed? Many bloggers and business owners don’t realize the importance of building an email list when they’re first starting out. Most people usually change their mind when they see the impact email lists can have on someone else’s traffic and revenue. In this article, we will share the top reasons why building an email list is important (with real case studies). We will also show you how to start building your email list – step by step.

In this beginner’s guide, we will cover the following topics:

• What is an email list?
• Why building an email list is important
• Social media vs email marketing
• What marketing experts are saying about email marketing
• What do you need to start building an email list
• How to choose the best email marketing service
• How to grow your email list and get more subscribers
• Finding new list building strategies and resources

By the end of this article, you should have answers to all your questions about building an email list.

What is an Email List?

An email list is a special list of names and email addresses of people who gave you permission to send them updates and promotions from your business.

You can build your email list inside a marketing software and send bulk email notifications to everyone regarding your blog updates, online store, or other business services.

Why Building an Email List is Important?

According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing on average sees a 4300 percent return on investment (ROI) for businesses in the USA.

Because email subscribers joined your email list from your website and verified their identity by clicking on a link (double-optin), they are extremely interested in what you have to offer. This is why they are more likely to convert into paying customers.

In our business, email list gets 10 times higher conversions than social media campaigns.

This makes sense if you think about the reasons that make email an incredibly powerful communication channel:

1. Email is Personal

Email allows you to land into a user’s inbox. There is no ranking system limiting your reach. It is very direct and personal.

2. Email is Purposeful

To get updates from you, a user fills out a form to signup for your email list and confirm their email address. Someone doing this much work is obviously interested in hearing from you, and they are much more receptive to your message.

3. Email is Targeted

As we mentioned earlier, the user has already shown interest in your product or content. Since you already know what they like, you can deliver them highly relevant offers to get better results. This is called segmentation, and we will cover that later in the article.

4. You Own Your Email List

You do not own Facebook, Twitter, or Google. Your social media campaigns and SEO efforts can go to waste when these platforms change their policies. On the other hand, you own your email list, and it is not influenced by decisions of other businesses.

5. Email is One-on-One

People read email in the privacy of their inbox. The message is not on a public timeline or newsfeed. They can ask you questions directly in private with confidence. This helps build trust and connection.

6. More People Use Email Several Times a Day

You may have heard that Facebook has 1.4 billion and Twitter has 100 million daily active users. What you have may not have heard, is the number of people using Email every day.

Every internet user has at least one email account. A recent research conducted by Radicati found out that there 3.8 billion active email accounts. That’s half the population of Earth.

This is precisely why every smart business in the world has an email list.

Big name brands learned this lesson a long time ago, and that’s why they spend thousands of dollars on social media campaigns to get people to sign up for their email lists.

They understand that email marketing is the best long-term investment with a much higher return because people will continue to get their message at a very low cost for a longer period of time.

Social Media vs Email Marketing

Now you’re probably thinking, wait a minute. What about social media?

In fact, we have been asked several times isn’t email marketing kind of dead with social media taking over everything?

The best way to answer this question is to look at the information Twitter and Facebook ask you before you create an account:

Yup, it’s an email address.

These companies know that emails are the most direct and reliable way of getting in touch with their customers.

Even if you sign up using your phone number, they will keep asking for your email address to help you find friends, for password recovery options, and most importantly to send you targeted email messages.

Here is a view of the social tab in a typical Gmail user’s inbox.

All these emails are from big social media platforms, so they can engage you with the content on their platform and get you to visit their app or website again.

All social media platforms are building an email list because they are smart business owners. This helps their valuation when selling their business.

While social media is a great way to reach your audience, it’s important to keep in perspective the timely nature of social media platforms.

They come and go.

Not too long ago we had MySpace, FriendFeed, Google Buzz, Plurk and countless others. Most of them are either dead now or irrelevant.

Today we have Facebook and Twitter that are prominent, but not everyone enjoys these platform. Some people prefer Instagram, Pinterest, WhatsApp, Snapchat, LinkedIn, etc.

Basically your users are all over the place on different platforms. But studies show that at least 91% of consumers check their email on a daily basis.

We are not saying that social media is not important. It is, and you should explore every opportunity to reach your audience.

However, you should spend more time and effort into something that guarantees higher results.

What Experts are Saying About Building an Email List?

Don’t take just our word for it, listen to what all top marketing experts are saying about email marketing:

Out of all the channels I tested as a marketer, email continually outperforms most of them.

– Neil Patel – Crazy Egg and QuickSprout

Getting an email address is the first critical step to figuring out who my reader is, and hopefully in the future, my customer of some sort.

– Joe Pulizzi – Founder Content Marketing Institute

If you’re not building an email list, you’re making a HUGE mistake.

– Derek Halpern – Founder Social Triggers

Email is the most predictable driver of growth and sales in our business. I prefer email marketing over all other traffic channels.
– Syed Balkhi – Founder WPBeginner

Many expert marketers say their biggest mistake was not building an email list when they first started out.

With all the reasons above, we hope that you’re convinced that building an email list is important for all businesses.

Now you might be wondering, how do I build an email list?

This brings us to the next section.

What You Need to Start Building an Email List?

By now, you know why building an email list is so important, and why ignoring it can be a HUGE mistake.

So let’s take a look at what you need to start building your email list.

3 Things You Need to Build an Email List:

1. A website or blog.
2. An email marketing service.
3. High-converting opt-in forms

All three of these are fairly easy to set up, and none of them require programming or design skills.

For the sake of this article, we will only be focusing on the last two items in the list. If you don’t have a website or blog yet, then see our step by step guide on how to start a blog or how to make a website.

Choosing the Best Email Marketing Service

There are tons of email marketing services out there. Often beginners use the free option to save cost, which is understandable. However, some of these free platforms are not the best. Why?

Some platforms mislabel themselves as “email marketing service” when in reality all they offer is free blog subscription via email. This allows your users to receive an email update every time you publish a new blog post.

But that’s not true email marketing. Here are some of the downsides of using a free blog notification service:

• You can’t send out private email newsletters. To send an email, you will have to publish a new blog post, which means that the information you want to share will have to be publicly available first.
• You can’t personalize the email message. It will be delivered in the same format often with no branding or personalization.
• You can’t categorize subscribers by interests, demographics, or content type.
• There is no reporting. You don’t know how many people got the email, what percentage of users opened it, and how many of them clicked on your links.
• If you later tried to move to a paid service, your users will have to re-confirm their subscription. Many of them will not do it, and you will end up losing subscribers.

This is why we ALWAYS recommend using a professional email marketing service right from the beginning.

Yes, they cost a little bit of money, but they are an investment in your business which pays huge returns.

The benefit of professional email marketing services are:

• You can send private mass emails to your subscribers.
• You can see subscriber activity and group your subscribers based on actions they take.
• You can run A/B split tests to see which email subject line, content, and offers work best with your subscribers.
• With reporting tools, you can see which country you have the most subscribers from. You can adjust your time zone preferences, and send emails at the right time.
• Last, but definitely the most important, you can see the email addresses of all your subscribers.

There are hundreds of professional email marketing services available. To make it easy for you, we have compiled a list of the top email marketing services based on ease of use, cost-effectiveness, features, and performance.

For small businesses, we recommend using Constant Contact because they are one of the largest email marketing services in the world.

They offer a 30 day free trial. This gives you plenty of time to set up and start seeing the results. At the end of 30 days, your email list would likely be paying for itself (cost $20 / month). Start your free trial.

If you’re looking for something more advanced that includes powerful marketing automation, then we recommend using Drip or ConvertKit. They are both very popular among business owners, and they come with free trials as well.

Once you have signed up with an email marketing service, the next step is to add opt-in forms to your website to allow your users to subscribe.

Growing Your Email List and Getting More Subscribers

Did you know that more than 70% of visitors abandoning your website will never return? It’s true, just look in your Google Analytics and look at the percentage of new vs returning visitors.

That’s why you need to convert every website visitor into an email subscriber before they leave, so you can send them relevant messages to bring them back.

An average internet user spends just a few seconds looking at a website. This gives you very little time to engage them. If your email sign up forms are not noticeable, then users will leave without ever subscribing to your website.

The biggest mistake that we see beginners make is not strategically placing high-converting opt-in forms.

Some WordPress themes come with built-in sidebar widgets, but they don’t convert as well.

Your email marketing service may also provide you with codes to embed in your theme, but that requires you to know how to code.

This is why we recommend our users to use OptinMonster. It is the most powerful conversion optimization software that helps you convert abandoning website visitors into subscribers and customers.

Instead of adding boring sign up forms to your sidebar, you can easily create high-converting opt-in forms like lightbox popups, floating header and footer bars, slide-in scroll boxes, fullscreen welcome mat, inline forms, and more.

But what makes OptinMonster really powerful is the behavior automation and personalization features. OptinMonster allows you to automatically show different opt-in forms based on where the user is coming from, which page they are visiting, and what they are doing on your website.

For example, the Exit-Intent® feature track your users mouse behavior and show them a targeted opt-in form at the precise moment they are about to leave. This helps you convert abandoning visitors into subscribers.

That’s why influencers like Michael Hyatt, Neil Patel, and Social Media Examiner use exit-intent on their websites. It helped Social Media Examiner add over 95,000 new subscribers in 7 months.

Nicolas Gagne, a small business owner, combined Constant Contact with a single exit-intent optin to grow his email list by 500%. This helped him triple his revenue from his online store (see the full case study).

There are tons more case studies and OptinMonster reviews that you can read as well.

Get started with OptinMonster today — Use the coupon WPB10 to get 10% off.

Note: OptinMonster was started by WPBeginner’s founder, Syed Balkhi, because he wanted to get more email subscribers, faster. It helped us increase our email signups by 600%. Due to popular request, we released this tool for public, and currently, it’s the most recommended lead generation software in the market.

List Building Strategies and Resources

Having the right tools is crucial, but knowing how to use them properly is what makes the most difference.

In your email marketing strategy, the most important thing you should plan out is segmentation.

What is email list segmentation?

Email list segmentation is the process of grouping your subscribers, so you can better personalize your emails based on interest.

It helps you get higher open rates and click-through rates. This definitive guide to email marketing has all the information you need to segment your email list like a pro.

If you want to start growing your email list quickly, then see our tested and easy tricks to grow your email list faster.

If you’re not sure how to create an opt-in form, then see this 63-point checklist for creating a high-converting optin form.

Content Upgrades are the highest converting opt-in forms. It’s a technique where you offer bonus content at the end of your popular blog posts. These usually convert 5 times higher than a regular opt-in. Here are some content upgrade ideas that you should check out. We have a complete guide on how to effectively use content upgrades in WordPress.

There are a lot of different ways to capture email leads, and we have covered them in detail in our beginner’s guide to lead generation in WordPress.

Conclusion

It does not matter what kind of business you run, what kind of website you have, or what industry you are in.

If you have a website, and you want to turn your visitors into returning customers, then you need to get them in your email list.

We hope this article helped you understand why building an email list is important and helped you get started on the right foot.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Revealed: Why Building an Email List is so Important Today (6 Reasons) appeared first on WPBeginner.

Source: Wordpres

The post Revealed: Why Building an Email List is so Important Today (6 Reasons) appeared first on TuneMaster.ml.